The Ninth Point

In today's post, I would be sharing some key points about Biochar (The points, except the 9th one, are excerpts from the book: Biochar Production, Characterization, and Applications edited by Yong Sik Ok, Sophie M. Uchimiya, Scott X. Chang, and Nanthi Bolan). 

My post is coming in late because I have been immensely occupied with a few things of late. I took my second Environmental Toxicology exam on Friday. Grappled with some Profession Chemistry assignment to be finally turned in on Monday night, and few personal projects I do not want to bore you with, here. 

Remember, all posts here have to be in relation to my academic and research experience in grad school. Already, I am done with the Report Writing for Professional Chemistry task, what is left is the insertion and alignment of in-text citations and references. It is about a thousand words. I know you would like to read it, and trust me, I shall share it here in about a fortnight. I need to submit it for grading first, so Turnitin does not recognize it has been shared here and am sanctioned for plagiarism. 

That reminds me, the Biochar samples I had made were not enough so I am making a sufficient one. On Friday, I oven dried the biochar up to 30 hours at 100 deg. C. The next thing is to pulverize it with the grinder, then sieve it to 420nm or less. When I am done with this, I will follow the same procedure I had previously used. I fault myself for the insufficiency. I had a flawed experimental design as I did not consider samples for instrumental analyses. As I may have mentioned before, I will be making use of at least nine instruments during Biochar projects. 

TSP: You see my point?

What is it to know about Biochar, today? 

1. The term char is used to denote any solid product resulting from the natural and synthetic organic material decomposition (Fitzer et al. 1995). 

2. Biochar and charcoal have been distinguished considering the end use (Lehmann and Joseph 2009): charcoal is used as fuel and energy, whereas biochar is directed toward environmental management and carbon sequestration.

3. The polycyclic aromatic structure of biochar hinders biological decomposition and chemical oxidation, thereby explaining its persistence over centuries in the environment (Glaser et al. 2000). 

4. The surface of biochar has a high density of negatively charged groups of carbon and oxygen atoms called carboxylate groups. These carboxylate groups originate from superficial oxidation and this may be the reason for the increased nutrient-holding capacity of terra preta (Kim et al. 2007). 

5. Plant material is decomposed by soil microorganisms within a few years and returns carbon to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO2) as a part of the nutrient recycling role of the soil. Instead of allowing this carbon to escape from the soil as CO2, the conversion of plant material into charcoal would provide several distinct benefits (Lehmann et al. 2003; Seifritz 1993; Steiner et al. 2007). 

6. Today, the biochar concept has a strong global context, as it is positioned strongly in areas such as climate change (carbon abatement), but intrinsically linked to renewable energy capture (biomass pyrolysis) and food production and land-use change (food and feed production), further extending to the enhancement of environmental quality (control of diffuse pollution) and management of organic wastes (stabilization and use), through management of soil nutrients. 

7. In Australia, a paddle drum pyrolyzer has been developed, whereas in many parts of Africa, screw-type pyrolyzers are being used for the production of bio-oil and biochar. In Japan, the largest commercial slow pyrolysis rotary kiln operates at 100 tons of biomass per day (Duku et al. 2011). 

8. In addition, biochar can be produced as a pyrolytic by-product during bio-oil manufacturing (Mohan et al. 2007). According to the type of thermochemical processing (slow and fast pyrolysis, gasification, hydrothermal and flash carbonization), the products and their significant percentages will vary.

9. Biochar makes so much sense to me even though I am still trying to make so much sense of it.